In today’s Gospel reading, God the Father -- speaking from
a cloud -- told the disciples Peter, James and John:
This
is My Son. My Chosen One; listen to Him!
There was to be no heavenly – mysterious and potentially
terrifying -- voice from a cloud addressing the new Israel, but the earthly
words of Jesus alone would be all that could be desired or would be
needed.
There, indeed, we have the first of all commandments for
Christians, a command which Jesus Himself confirmed:
If you love Me, keep My
commandments. (John 14:15)
But there is more in the Father’s words beside the commandment
to ‘hear’ Jesus; there is also a most intimately Personal invitation or
call – This is My chosen, My beloved,
Son, hear Him – to hear Him in such a way as to learn to love Him as well as
to obey Him; the implication being that the only true knowledge of Jesus (‘hear
Him’) is that which results, fulfils itself, in love for Him.
Our ‘Father’ in faith (God’s gift) was and is Abraham, our
‘Mother’ is Mary (Jesus’ gift) immaculate in faith and body.
Abram (willing
to sacrifice his own beloved son at Gods command) put his faith in the Lord, Who credited it to him as an act of
righteousness.
Described by St. Paul as one whose ‘citizenship is in
heaven’, Abram was subsequently named Abraham and, as befitting our Christian
awareness of him as our ‘father in faith’, he lived St. Paul’s exhortation in
today’s second reading, in the most exemplary manner:
Stand
firm
in the Lord.
People of God, let us closely observe and carefully imitate
both Abraham and Mary. Yes indeed, let
us keep our eyes firmly on Abraham whose admirable faith in God was confirmed by the Lord’s mysterious and fiery
self-manifestation exemplifying His acceptance of Abraham’s sacrifice; let us
keep our eyes even more firmly fixed on Mary, whose supreme faith in God’s
promise was confirmed both by the beautiful mystery of the Lord’s Incarnation
brought about in her womb, and by the consummate mystery of the His Passion,
Death, and Resurrection given us for our confirmation and constant growth in
the faith we have received from God the Father Who first drew us to Jesus.
Today, God renews His choice of us by calling us anew to ‘hear’ His Son -- Who speaks clearly and surely to us in and through His Church -- and on hearing Him, to love Him by His Spirit, now gifted us in Mother Church by God for that very purpose, that we might in some measure become consumed with the Father’s own love for His Son. Only in the fulness of an authentic Divinely-Human Faith is the Christian Way able to communicate its awareness of, and response to, the fulness of Divine Goodness in Jesus. Therefore our Catholic – original and universal experience of Christianity -- is founded on literally (humanly) unimaginable promises and mysteries which are literally (humanly) unfathomable. There, indeed, lies an inescapable tension, but it is one designed not for our destruction but for an ever-continuing and harmonious development of all our human capabilities originally given us as the ‘image and likeness of God.
